


Like the Tide Pulling Me Back to You

by voxDei



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies), Pacific Rim: Uprising
Genre: M/M, Mental Illness, Mindfuck, Suicidal Ideation, Trauma, Uprising Spoilers, alien possession, fixfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 09:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14306058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxDei/pseuds/voxDei
Summary: Newt is a traitor. Newt is a mastermind. Newt is a leashed puppet.Hermann has had enough.





	Like the Tide Pulling Me Back to You

**Author's Note:**

> the pacing is all off and I'm not entirely happy with some of the dialogue and Uprising did _not_ give me a whole lot to work with here _but_
> 
> it's as good as it's going to get and it was therapeutic as all hell to write so here have some hasty fixit fic

Some part of him loves this.

Some part of him delights in what he’s doing, excited beyond words by the new possibilities opening up under his fingers, by the leaps and bounds his science has made. By the beauty in what he’s creating.

That’s the part of him that the Precursors wield like a knife to keep the rest of him in line, leading him with a carrot stuffed full of dopamine and endorphins when he’s too tired to fight them, when they can’t be bothered to hurt him. That’s the part of him that whispers unbidden that this is okay, it’s not so bad, look at what he’s able to do!

It makes him wail that _he wants this._

It makes him push back in his chair, throwing back his head and letting the fluorescents above burn Kaiju blue smears from his eyes. It’s November in Hong Kong but Shao Industries has never had a problem with the heating bill, all the servers and machines at work building Shao’s empire put out more heat than anyone needs, so Newt is in shirtsleeves with an open collar and will, inevitably, forget how cold it is outside until he’s halfway home (“home”) and suddenly notices the wind ripping right through him.

Right now he runs a hand through his hair, grimacing at the grease, and lets mundane thoughts distract him. He needs a shower, and a meal, and for these _fucking_ samples to grow fast enough—

He flinches, physically, and the sudden pressure recedes an inch. “I, I know,” he snipes at the ceiling, “I know, it’s still a work in progress alright? I’m, I’m working on it, you know that I’m working on it, so cut me a little slack alright, there isn’t a protocol for this.”

It’s enough, though, that they’re growing at all. His new masters learned early on that they can’t push him as relentlessly as they can their Kaiju creations, human bodies are fragile. They can’t deny him basic necessities out of urgency, no matter how much his body is already used to sleep deprivation and a diet of coffee and air, they can’t run him into the ground. So they let him rest, let him work at his own typical frantic pace, but they never, ever, let him forget.

So he grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes, fills his lungs with stale, circulated air, and gets back to work.

—————

When he gets back to his swanky, gaudy flat he closes the curtains against the midmorning glare and promptly passes out on top of the sheets. When he wakes he is ravenous, and eats his way through half a pack of frozen waffles before his phone rattles itself off the table and the clatter finally catches his attention.

He flicks through his messages, chewing another icy waffle without tasting it. Work, work, the Duolingo Owl threatening family he doesn’t have over missing his Mandarin lesson, Hermann—

Hermann, in his clipped, curt way asking after his availability, proposing a collaboration of some kind. Hermann, slipping in a “I need a lab partner, the fools they keep pairing me with can’t compare” at the end of his email, like he thinks if he says it last Newt won’t notice. Hermann, whose contact had gotten more and more infrequent as Newt stopped responding.

Hermann, who must be hurting at this distance.

Newt didn’t realize when he slid to the floor, only notices now when he can’t see his phone screen anymore and jerks his head back, his skull thunking against the sink cabinet. He’s never been good at controlling himself — the words “emotional disregulation” printed in an unforgiving typeface on his IEP — and he’s actually gotten worse in the last few years and right now all he can feel is pain. 

Newt howls and throws his phone as hard as he can, hearing the plastic bounce twice off the floor and not caring, curling up around the old ache in his guts he’d thought, hoped, had died years ago. It burns now, driving him to sobs and he claws at his head and rages, inside, the meltdown sudden and unstoppable and—

The cattle prod cracks down, his leash is yanked, and all his anger is transmuted back to misery as the pressure squashes his mind flat. He gasps hard, painfully, his cheek pressed into the cold marble floor and his next breath is an empty sob. He can’t move, trembling with the ache inside, and all he can think is that he hates this he hates this _I hate this._

_No_ , the hiss in his mind says, meaning trickling down and barely captured by his childlike language, _you hate them._

_I don’t_ he tries to say but that traitorous part of him that takes such joy in seeing his fledgeling Kaiju brains grow and evolve says _fuck them for their dismissal, fuck Hermann for all he hated you, doom them all for their callous disrespect_ and for the life of him he can’t tell if the voice is his or his masters’.

So he lies there curled on his kitchen floor sobbing into empty air and trying in vain to convince himself that his family doesn’t deserve what’s coming.

————

The drift is a drug habit he can’t kick, the decade-old Kaiju hindbrain thrashing in its nutrient slurry, Newt slouched almost out of some hypermodern beanbag chair he doesn’t remember buying, twitching as if in seizure. It soothes him, makes him forget the empty space at his side, makes it easier to accept what he’s doing because if he can’t stop it then god damn him he might as well be comfortable for the ride.

He comes out of it fresh, clearheaded, the new self his masters have cobbled together from his ambition and bruised pride and love of all things that shade of blue riding high and steady, and his hands do not shake as he showers mechanically and skins himself into one of those tacky suits Hannibal Chau would have been jealous of. He does not, will not, look at the place in front of the fridge where he lay for the better part of a day, does not pay attention to the spiderwebbing cracks in his phone screen. He strides into work bellowing orders to his latest crop of nerdlings and the numbers on the main screen give him a thrill he is not afraid of showing. He is a genius and no one will deny it, once this is done.

————

Afterwards, after the first war had been won, after… everything, Newt sunk into a deep melancholy. He didn’t understand why, couldn’t make sense of his black mood and unpredictable anger — he had everything he wanted! Rock star status, all the interviews he could ask for, a safe, glorious, world, Hermann — everything! But he couldn’t settle, couldn’t just be happy. He got irritable, then cruel, he thought the trauma had fucked his brain chemistry again and he tried a dozen meds legal and not trying to kick it back into equilibrium but nothing worked.

He didn’t even realize how isolated he’d made himself until Mako kicked down his door and demanded to know what was so wrong and he screamed in her face that she’d never trusted him and then collapsed in a sobbing heap on the floor once he’d chased her out.

After that he felt more firmly justified and hurt because she never did come back. Hermann’s calls came with increasing infrequency, Raleigh seemed to have forgotten his name, the world at large moved on. The worst nights were when the guilt came crashing down over him, though, and he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t chase them away like he did, the worm of self-loathing twisting up with the old anger over being ignored, dismissed, and driving him to ever greater lengths to soothe it.

On some impulse, some souvenir collecting urge, he had arranged for the brain of Otachi’s child to be harvested, preserved, kept in as stable a half-life as he could manage. He didn’t realize what his hoarding instinct was until he looked over the collection of junk and Jaeger parts he’d salvaged without a thought and realized he had the makings of a second neural bridge and then… well. It was all too easy to build it again.

The drugs weren’t working, the alcohol stopped burning out his misery, he’d cut off anyone who could have helped him and he wasn’t going to let his presence ruin the lives they’d built in the year after the Breach was closed, no, he would not inflict himself on them. So he did the only thing he could do.

He put himself back in Otachi Jr.’s head.

And when he came out again his mind was crystal clear, the plans and schematics like a beacon in his head, he had _purpose_ again. He took the first job offer he found that gave him a lab and threw himself into creating, salvaging cells one at a time from what was left of the Kaiju and picking them apart organelle by organelle, finally understanding how they grew. He cobbled together a growth medium on a whim and yelled for joy when he came in the next day to find his samples nearly overrun with tiny blue cells. Most of them were dead, but there were more of them!

It took him six months to burn out and find himself vomiting from stress again. Six months to nearly get himself fired for throwing live sample dishes at a lab assistant.

He didn’t understand what was happening, he thought it was _fixed dammit._ He’d had stretches like this before, forgetting to eat for days on end, becoming so focused on his work he neglected all else, but, but this wasn’t that. This was he would remember food existed but something would shove him back, this was inexplicable rage at anything that distracted him.

When he was eventually fired for being such an unjustifiable nutcase that even his Kaiju-killer rock star status couldn’t save him, he found another lab within a week and started the cycle over. It took him two more years to realize why the drift stabilized him so much, and even then there was no big reveal moment, no sudden shock. It was just a slow buildup of evidence until he was overrun with sudden hunger sitting at his microscope and actually thought the words _of course, they don’t want me to die yet._

_They don’t want me to die yet._

And by that point there was no use hiding it anymore. The Precursors didn’t bother hiding their hand once the jig was up, didn’t bother veiling their orders in his subconscious; they’d figured out how to leash him most efficiently, how he could push forward their plans, and when Shao Industries took an interest in him he accepted immediately. Heavy automation he could exploit, a team of scientist underlings all his own, and a boss who made no secret of her contempt for him. It was perfect.

—————

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he babbles during his few lucid moments in the Shatterdome’s improvised brig, when he’s not comatose or raging his masters’ words at their enemy. “I’m sorry, I tried…” There have to be cameras down here, watching him, he has to make sure they _know._

Stacker’s kid hates him, Mako Mori is _dead_ , dead by Newt’s own hand, Raleigh’s upstairs trying to take the lead but Newt knows the grief is dragging him down like a cinderblock on each leg, Mako didn’t even get to go down fighting—

“I’m sorry!” he howls, straining against the leather straps keeping him tethered to the chair. They have to know, before they kill him, how hard he tried to fight it. Not that it made much of a difference, in the end, but. They have to know that he didn’t want this.

And they are going to kill him, he’s sure of it. He’s an enemy agent, he’s directly responsible for the deaths of thousands, he almost ended the world, he should have saved them the trouble and taken a dive off a skyscraper the minute he realized what _they’d_ done to him—

He wonders what will happen when they do it, if the Precursors will feel it. He hopes it hurts them.

So it is a complete surprise when Hermann limps purposefully into his cell tailing a pair of assistants, Jake Pentecost, and a mobile PONS unit.

He watches mutely, trying to see past the headache thumping along behind his eyes, as Hermann directs the nerdlings to get the neural bridge operational. Pentecost stands by the wall, silent and arms crossed, so unskilled at being stoic like his father. Emotion sizzles on Jake’s skin, impatience and anger too visible.

Hermann startles him by looming suddenly in his view, one knobbly hand patting him brusquely on the cheek, and Newt jerks back in his restraints, nerves suddenly a-jangle — no one _touches_ him anymore. “Newton,” Hermann says, his voice thick and unreadable, “Newton we are going to get you out of there. Get _them_ out of there, we can fix you.”

Newt chokes. “You,” he tries, “you can’t—” He shudders, turning his face away. “You _can’t_ , Hermann, you’re smart you have to understand that it’s too late! You’re not strong enough, if you try they’ll, they’ll.” He swallows hard. “They want you to try.”

Pentecost jerks his chin. “See, Gottlieb? One more reason not to try this, they’re probably just waiting to infect you too. I don’t want to have to put down our best science officer.”

Hermann’s spine stiffens, shoulders military-straight, and he speaks without looking back at Pentecost. “I have already given you my reasons and my ultimatum, I respect your authority here Jake but you have to let me do this.”

“You can’t!” Newt howls as they strap the neural interface around his head, because the thought of it is horrifying. He can’t bear to think of Hermann as he is now, leashed and used, an instrument in his friends’ destruction.

But they’re not listening they’re never listening and when Hermann holds the trigger in his shaking hands and pushes the button Newt goes into the drift screaming.

——————

Hermann told the Marshall his plan and got a flat _no_ and an ejection from the room. Hermann told Li Wen his plan and she told him he should have let her shoot Newt in the first place. Hermann went through a dozen lab techs before he found two willing to help him with this, and by then Jake Pentecost had tracked him down and was attempting to bully him out of his intentions.

“The risk is too much, Gottlieb, you know that! Newt got compromised through the drift and it’s a miracle it didn’t happen to you too, we can’t risk losing you now.” He puts a sympathetic hand on Hermann’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Doctor, it’s just not worth it.”

That was when Hermann’s control snapped and he jabbed the tip of his cane into Jake’s foot hard enough to make the ranger yelp. “Not worth it?” he hisses, leaning on Jake’s arch. “Not worth it! Do you know _why_ I have not suffered the same corruption Newton has, hm? It is because the only time I drifted with a Kaiju brain I did it alongside him, there were two of us sharing the load, _they couldn’t get through_.” He takes a breath, stabilizing. “I believe that if we recreate that experience, minus the fresh Kaiju entrails, I can provide enough of a buffer to separate Newton’s mind out from the Precursors’ control, and I am not going to let your callous disregard for my partner’s life stop me!”

Jake jerks his foot hard enough to dislodge Hermann’s cane, scowling. “And if you’re wrong? If you come out of that drift with Kaiju-builders in your head?”

Hermann sets his jaw, jerks his chin. “Then shoot me.”

————

The drift is chaos, and horrifying; a whirlwind of claws and blood and alien malevolence and under it all, at the eye of the storm, Newt.

Newt, weary and beaten, terrified for Hermann, straining to be heard above the roar of the hivemind.

Hermann can barely perceive him, buffeted as he is on all sides by _enemy, Precursor, soon-to-be Master_ — it strips him down to nothing, rips away his defenses, his aspirations, everything he _wants to be_ until all that is left is what he _is_. And what he is is helpless.

They are _ravenous_ , surging at him with a sound that could be called laughter, mocking his attempt to take back what they’ve laid claim to. This pawn is _theirs_ , and it’s not enough to stop Hermann from rescuing him, no, they need to make sure the lesson sinks in.

Newt screams, feeling Hermann driven away from him, and thrashes against the cage of his skull. He rages, claws at the hivemind, trying to draw its attention back onto him — and turn it does.

His masters batter him back down, bombarding him with what he had wrought and hissing _isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t this what you wanted?_ Grown Kaiju brains piloting mechs of his design, three Kaiju becoming one sewn together seamlessly, _a marvel—_

_NO_ he screeches, _roars_ , strains forward to reach his— his partner, friend, lover, whatever the fuck you want to call what they are, Hermann means more to him than any glorious blueblooded monster, even the ones grown from petri dishes like his own goddamn children. He’ll die for Hermann, should have died for Hermann a long time ago but oh fucking well, the least he can do right now is fight for him.

But he’s so, so _weak_ , weak to start with and weakened further by a decade of mental chokeholds, of lies he told himself so he wouldn’t try to cut his masters out of his head himself, of his self-preservation instinct turned traitor against him. One more reason to fight isn’t going to change that.

But what _is_ going to change that is Hermann’s consciousness finally — _finally_ — slotting in beside his own in a way they’ve only done once before but already feels like home.

It’s like the Jaeger pilots, moving in tandem, barely enough time to feel let alone think, and Hermann’s mind is scarcely more resilient than his own but _together_ , together there is a thin shell of delay, of distraction, keeping the Precursors from touching them by a scant inch, and that’s all Hermann needs to pull them up, back the way he came. 

Coming back to himself like like breaching the surface of the ocean, rearing up screaming into blinding fluorescent lights and to the beautiful sound of Jake Pentecost yelling about what he’s done to Hermann. 

Hermann, who he can see seizing on the floor, blurry with the bleed creeping across Newt’s iris. He jerks in his restraints, jaw almost too stiff to move right away. “Nng,” he tries, sucks in air, and pries his jaws apart. “Hermann.” 

Hermann’s thrashing is subsiding, his chest heaving under his stupid old-fashioned sweater, and his nose drips arterial red onto the concrete floor but he is already smiling, grinning feverishly, gasping breathlessly, “I told you it would work." 

Pentecost won’t let them untie Newt yet, and he won’t let Hermann or anyone else leave the cell until he’s figured out a reliable way to tell if Newt’s really cured, if he’s not just faking it somehow. Hermann argues past his searing headache but Newt can’t bring himself to focus, it’s all he can do to lie there and blind himself staring into the buzzing lights above him. 

He hadn’t realized how much noise there was. He hadn’t realized how much they’d crowded in, shoved him to the very corners of his brain, filled him full to bursting with their hostile, malevolent minds. 

He feels so very small in his own head. 

Someone pulls the neural interface crown off his head and he realizes he’s been crying, fresh wetness dripping down his tipped-back face. He licks his lips and tastes blood. 

After unknown time — minutes, hours, who knows — Newt registers hands on his arms, the straps around his limbs coming undone. “Newton,” Hermann’s rough voice draws him back, “Newton, can you hear me?” 

His tongue feels like thick leather, but he tries. “Hherm. Hermann, hey.” 

“Newton, I,” Hermann swallows, scrubs drying blood from his upper lip, “I think we did it.” 

The sound that comes out of Newt wants to be a laugh but the best he can manage is a croak. “Y-yeah, dude. I think we did.” 

Hermann tries to help him upright but between his bad leg and Newt’s utter lack of motor control they don’t get very far. The nerdlings, shaken but determined, help them both to walk, shadowed by the unhappy form of Jake Pentecost. Someone must have commed the news because they’re almost swarmed by people before they reach the med bay, and when they do it’s almost empty even though Hermann _knows_ they have more wounded than they know what to do with. _Cowards_ , he thinks viciously. No one wants to be near them. 

Newt flinches next to him and Hermann gets _fuckedup unforgivable I’m so sorry_ feedback through the lingering ghost of the drift and it makes him suck in a heavy breath. 

They get him onto a vacated cot and Hermann wants to go shout at an actual medical professional until they start doing their damn jobs again, but his leg’s on fire and he can’t leave Newt here alone so he settles for sending the nerdlings off to do it. He’s halfway astonished they’re still with him, he didn’t think he could count on them this much. 

He drops down into a shitty plastic chair, rubbing at the fierce ache in his leg, and watches Newt turn over on top of the cheap hospital-issue sheets so that the light isn’t in his eyes. A shuffling sound makes Hermann look behind him and shoot a glare at Pentecost. “If you would keep watch outside,” he says, hoping Jake’ll get the message. The ranger crosses his arms. Hermann sighs. “There is one exit to this room, and unless you seriously think Newton is faking his current state, I very highly doubt he is in any condition to do me any harm right now. Go.” 

This, combined with a _look_ that would catch fire to paper, is enough to make Jake give a grunt and consent to standing guard outside, the door between them firmly closed and locked. 

In the sudden, buzzing silence, Hermann exhales. 

It’s a few minutes before Newt looks up, as if not trusting that they’re alone. Hermann puts a knobbly hand atop his, fingers settling where the colors he cloaked himself in end, and Newt doesn’t flinch away. It’s a near thing though, Hermann can feel the reflexive tightening of Newt’s shoulders ghosted in his own. 

With his other hand, trembling so slightly, Newt reaches up and brushes his fingertips against the purple and yellow bruising at Hermann’s throat, colors disappearing under his hiked-up collar. They don’t look fresh; it must have been a few days at least since— since that confrontation at the lab. 

Since Hermann realized what he was doing. 

Since he’d knocked Li Wen’s gun off target and let Newt escape. 

Newt makes a sound that’s a sob trying to be a laugh and turns his face to bury it in the shitty flat pillow on the cot. Hermann swallows thickly, takes Newt’s hand in his and presses it to his cheek. Newt shudders, the impulse ripping through him again — grab, squeeze, crush any opposition to his work — but it’s a phantom, a flash of feeble intent and then gone again, and he knows Hermann felt it too because his grip tightens, holding Newt firmly to the here and now. 

“I’m sorry,” he sobs, not trying to pull away. 

Hermann shakes his head. “This was why, all those years… it was them?” 

Jerkily, Newt nods. Ten years under Precursor control, ten years driven and driving himself further and further away from his family. 

A family that is maybe one person, now. If that. 

Hermann bares his teeth at the drift feedback, sliding off the plastic chair and onto the floor, the better to grab Newt close to him. “You fool,” he chokes, one arm hooked under Newt’s shoulder, “you blasted— how could you think you are anything less than the world to me?” 

Newt squeezes his eyes shut, nerves skittering at the _closeness_ , and he can’t help the certainty that Hermann is lying, that he’s fooled him again, made him think Newt’s worth _anything_ — but as quickly as it comes it’s beaten back through the drift by the magnitude of Hermann’s pain for him, the bitter longing that grew over the past decade, the avalanche of relief he feels now at having Newt back— 

“You are not what they did to you,” Hermann gets out between strained breaths, both of them overwhelmed by what’s passing between them, “you are an insufferable bastard but you are _mine_ , Newton, and you are brilliant and what they made you do wasn’t even half of your capabilities.” He’s on a roll now, lungs filling more easily. “Lab-grown Kaiju brains controlling the drones? You could do better, old friend, you could have had squeaking infant Kaiju running wild over the lot of us, and you know it.” 

Newt is laughing now, breath hitching here and there but _laughing_ , for real. “You!” he cries, incredulous, “you always hated my research, you didn’t even think we could _drift_ with the things—” 

“And look how wrong I was!” Hermann hollers back, holding onto him too tightly. “You glorious idiot…” 

For a long time they stay there like that, clinging to each other, the drift a faint ebb-and-flow between them. 

Days ago, Hermann had been so scared. 

He had been so scared when the drones made their circles and started channeling lasers into the water, when the light went from blue to orange and _things_ started boiling up from the seabed. 

He had been so scared because a not-insignificant part of him had leapt for joy to see it. 

He theorized later, in the gasping minutes between battles, that it was a subconscious desire planted there a decade ago, ignored and tamped down under the work he’d kept himself occupied with. There were no voices in his head, no unrelenting pressure to obey — he had done the mental equivalent of patting himself down, hunting for any trace of foreign influence, and had found nothing. 

But he still wanted the breach. He wanted to see the numbers lined up, he wanted to bend physics to his will and rip the world open again, he wanted to _control it—_

So Newt’s memories in the drift, of the feverish need to see a Kaiju grow and develop, are terribly familiar to him. He knows what it’s like, that ambition, and he cannot bring himself to hate Newt for it, cannot blame him for what he’s done. Not entirely. 

And Newt knows this now, knows it from having _seen_ it. And Hermann knows Newt’s lingering desires to play God to a whole new generation of monsters, knows them as the reverse side of his own need to wrench a hole in reality with nothing but numbers and willpower. This is all that’s left of the Precursors’ control, these last wants that play so perfectly with who they are that it’s almost impossible to separate them out. 

Hermann doubts they’ll ever be really free of them. 

But it doesn’t matter, because for the first time in ten years Newt is free of the clawing whispers of his otherworldly masters, only the faintest imprint like sundazzle left in his mind. For the first time in ten years they can _rest_ , together. 

And, eventually, they can make a counteroffensive. 


End file.
